SHREVEPORT – Do you have Scottish heritage or lineage?
Come find your family’s tartan at the exhibit “A Tour of Scotland by the Books” in the Noel Collection, located on the third floor of the Noel Memorial Library.
Each clan designed a specific cloth pattern (tartan) from which that clan would fashion their kilts and outerwear.
Books showcase hundreds of clans and their tartan designs.
“We would love for people to stop by and find their family’s tartan, to connect with that history from this beautiful place,” said Martha Lawler, director of the Noel Collection. “We also have examples of Scotland’s scientific achievements, maps of the famous Battle of Culloden in 1746 and books written in Gaelic.”
The exhibit is open from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. each weekday and runs until Oct. 10.
One of the jewels of the exhibit is a first-edition printing of economist Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations from 1776. Smith, a Scottish native, wrote one of the fundamental works in classical economics.
The exhibit contains a Gaelic Bible and dictionary from the 1800s.
After Scottish Jacobites under the leadership of Charles Stuart pushed the English out of Scotland in 1745 and attempted to place Stuart on the English throne, the Battle of Culloden was the decisive English victory that ended the rebellion.
The maps detail the political boundaries of the time.
Pictures and stories of idyllic Scottish monuments such as Edinburg Castle and the Holyrood Palace and accompanying abbey can be viewed.
Scotland also has unique wildlife such as the Shetland Pony, hand-drawn and hand-colored illustrations by artists in the 1800s.
All works come from the James Smith Noel Collection. The Shreveport native amassed approximately 200,000 volumes over the course of his life, which were stored in an abandoned train station before LSUS agreed to house the collection. The university and the state constructed the Noel Memorial Library on the LSUS campus to hold and maintain the collection.
The collection, which is the largest private collection of antiquarian books in the U.S., is open for public use, and scholars come from all over the world to view its tomes.
